Page 94 of Eruption

Lono was long gone when, a few minutes later, Mac and General Rivers walked across the stage to the microphones. The soldiers had stationed themselves at various points around the theater.

“By now, most of you know who I am,” Rivers said. “Basically, I’m thehaolewho made this night necessary.”

“You don’t belong here!” an angry voice called out from the audience.

“As a matter of fact, this is exactly where I belong tonight,” Rivers said.

“And why is that?” a woman in the middle of the theater yelled.

Mac handled that one. “Because we need your help.”

It quieted the crowd for a moment; he had their full attention.

“Because we need you even more than you need us,” he said.

CHAPTER 68

It had been Mac’s idea for them to head over to the theater when Rivers got the call about what was happening.

They weren’t there long; they told the crowd they had time for only a few questions because they were going to be working through the night. Mac ended up doing most of the talking. He told them how long he’d lived here with his family, then he told them how much manpower was needed to save Hilo and that they needed volunteers to work on the mountains, especially to help build the three dikes between the Military Reserve and the town.

“This isn’t our island,” Mac told the crowd. “It’s yours.”

He paused and looked out into the audience, squinting into the lights.

“You haven’t felt as if you own it the past few days,” he said. “But you do. And it’s time for you to prove it.”

The soldiers escorted Mac and Rivers out of the Palace Theater, and when they were in the back parking lot, getting into their separate jeeps, Rivers said, “I wanted to tell them more.”

Mac said, “You mean the truth?”

“Exactly which truth are you referring to?”

“That we might all might be dead in two days?” Mac said. “That truth?”

Rivers told him about the dead body now buried in the Ice Tube.

The next morning, a few minutes after five in the predawn darkness, the townspeople of Hilo showed that they had gotten the message—they were lined up for a mile outside the military base, ready to go to work.

By then Mac and Jenny and Rick were already in the Ice Tube. Underneath the 360-degree LED lighting the army had provided, Mac oversaw the layering of the titanium around the rock walls, making sure it didn’t block the ongoing digging of the canals and trenches.

Rick had gone off somewhere, and for now it was just Mac and Jenny. Mac had brought a thermos of coffee, and he poured some for the two of them.

He saw her staring at him, smiling, only half her face in the light. “What?”

“Can I be honest?” she asked.

He smiled. “When are you not?”

“I don’t want to die, Mac.”

“And you’re not going to,” he said. “Not on my watch.”

“You’re starting to sound like a general.”

“Think of it as a battlefield commission.”

“Tell me it’s all going to come out right.”